I don’t know

I think, we humans, conclude quickly. I started with “we” humans, however, am going to continue with my personal experience, otherwise I might end up grossly underestimating or overestimating.

As a child, I believed in God, Ghosts, and all things supernatural. The reason I did this, I think, is because I wanted to know the answer. The answer to the question, “What phenomenon explains everything around me?” The way I was brought up, it was wrong to not know the answer. It was not ok to not score well in examinations, not ok to be left behind in anything. For competition’s sake, it might be fair to do this but when it comes to learning, this idea might not go/end well. Btw, learning happens lifelong. Just to clarify, I was not harassed or anything but I felt uncomfortable asking questions and saying, “I don’t know.” I rarely heard people say it either, so I assumed that we had to know.

Let’s take an example to understand what I mean. The (COVID-19) pandemic, gave birth to a lot of pseudosciences, or probably the pseudoscience already existed and COVID just amplified the reach. I realized that the reason most believe in pseudoscience is because they are too paranoid to not know or reason about a working system. I was that person when I was young. So, as a result, people believe in the thing that feels intellectually right to them. We, like to conclude things as soon as we can, uncertainties are not welcome. We have to know what to do, we have to answer immediately when asked question(s).

Here is an example to concretize what I mean. I will give a few examples below and expect you to find a pattern.

[2, 4], [5, 25], [11, 121]

Can you find a pattern?

Group 1: Some might guess that one number is a square of another and conclude.

Group 2: Some might want to be sure and ask for a few more examples.

Let’s say, I add 1 more example for these curious folks. [13, 169]

I am sure Group 1 is happy by now has an “I told you” expression.

Group 2: Are happy too and conclude it is a square of numbers.

Group 3: Some might notice that these are indeed squares but of prime numbers.

So, concluding earlier might not be that great, I guess? A better thing to do would have been to say, “I don’t know (yet)”, ask more questions and try to find out get as close as possible.

Let me surprise you, “The pattern I was thinking of was squares of prime numbers below 15!!! “ How could you have been (possibly) right?

By trying to DISPROVE your assumption and not concluding early instead of trying to prove what we have already believed to be true. A subset of this way of thinking is also called confirmation bias. To explain further, we could have asked for more examples or come up with some more questions disproving what we believed.

For example, does [20, 400] fall in your pattern?

Finally, another surprise and the thing I want to convey with this essay. What if we can never understand what the pattern is? For example, it’s not squares of prime numbers less than 15, what about less than 100, 1000, 10000, and so on?

This is where we should try to seek but be ok when we cannot find answers. Remember that scientists and other great people spent their lives trying to work on something they believed in but did not conclude when they got the first chance. Some got the solutions at a younger age but most had to dedicate their lives to finding out. Unfortunately, we do not hear about the ones who did not succeed and celebrate only the ones who did. I think we should be ok with not knowing and have an inquisitive or exploratory mind rather than an explanatory one and someday, maybe someday, we might get the answer. I have learned to be not afraid of not knowing. I encourage you to “not know.”